Building large complex server farms including several rows of rack mounted servers has largely been a manual process. This manual process includes physically installing each server's hardware into a rack. After rack mounting the server, network wiring cables are connected to the server.
The manual process continues by updating a management interface for the server and the server's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). At this point, the server may not have an Operating System (OS), from which the server can be started up, or “booted.” For small installations consisting of a few servers, the server is generally booted from an OS found on server installation media that is manually inserted into the server. Alternatively, administrators may take advantage of booting a server into a Preboot Execution Environment (PXE). PXE booting allows the server to be configured and booted remotely by an administrator from media stored elsewhere on the network, but requires a PXE-capable network interface card, and a trivial file transfer protocol server on the network to provide an initial boot image, which would be generic for all PXE booted servers. Beyond this initial image boot, there would be several manual steps involved to get a server configured to a fully operating configuration.